


Blessed Are The Peacekeepers

by GothicPrincessWitch



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Broken Circle (quest), F/M, M/M, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Right of Annulment, Self-Hatred, Survivor Guilt, The Last Straw (quest)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 08:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13231902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothicPrincessWitch/pseuds/GothicPrincessWitch
Summary: Cullen struggles with survivor's guilt after being tortured by Uldred's followers and their demons and with how broken he is from the ordeal, and he carries this guilt with him years later as he tries to reconcile himself with Knight-Commander Meredith's orders for the Right of Annulment.





	1. Bloodstains

**Author's Note:**

> These two pieces were for the Templar!Cullen day of Cullen Appreciation Week 2017. Since I've moved most of my Fenhawke drabbles from Tumblr onto Ao3, I decided to upload these as well. 
> 
> The two chapters were originally one whole work that I separated for greater clarity, but you can still see where they echo each other, because I am a big fan of narrative parallels. The Leliana/Surana and Fenris/Hawke are background relationships, but it felt prudent to tag them. Please enjoy.

_Breathe in; breathe out,_ Cullen reminds himself over and over. The demons are gone. The blood mages are dead. There’s no danger here.

It’s irrational to believe otherwise, and yet he can’t help himself. The fear is a niggling scratch at the back of his mind.

It’s been a week since he was released from the cage, a week since the First Enchanter was killed and Uldred finally defeated. A week, and they still haven’t finished cleaning up the corpses. There are– pieces, and blood and ichor everywhere. Cullen, the other Templars, and the surviving mages have been working bit by bit. So much destruction, so much loss, so many bodies to burn.

The Templars are afraid of him. Cullen pretends not to notice, but he sees the way they edge around him, as if he’s fragile and liable to break at any moment.

He’s afraid they’re right.

Blood has soaked through the cracks between the stone tiles, and it won’t come out, it won’t come clean, no matter how hard he tries to scrub it out. The dried blood is on his hands, under his fingernails, and deeper than that, staining his soul. All of the blood is on him because he survived when they didn’t, and he shouldn’t have.

Cullen had hoped she would kill him, the girl he thought was the demon whom he thought was the girl he loves– _loved_. He can’t let himself love her anymore, and if she loved him, she would have let him die in that cage.

“I’m going to save you, Cullen, I swear it by Andraste’s name,” Surana had promised him. “I swear I’ll kill them all.”

The demons who were Surana but not Surana had said that as well. He can still hear their laughter at the edge of the room, at the back of his head, when he can no longer hold the darkness at bay. The real Surana used to have the most beautiful laugh and the brightest smile, the kind of effortless smile that would light up the entire room and turn his stomach full of cliched butterflies whenever he was fortunate enough that she’d flash that pretty smile toward him.

Surana wasn’t smiling when she found him in the cage. She was covered in blood, like himself, with a blade in her hand and eyes rimmed red from unshed angry tears. Cullen knew when he looked at her, when he realized it was truly she, that they were both broken from this, broken in ways that could never fit back together again.

Cullen had caught a glimpse of Surana, right before she left the tower, placing a soft kiss on the lips of a redheaded woman. He’d had enough pain that he couldn’t feel any more from this, and besides, he knew she wasn’t coming back.

And he knows that there isn’t anything left of him for her to come back to.

Cullen doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror anymore as he continues to try scrubbing the blood off his hands. The man staring back at him is older, more scarred, haggard, with a gleam of fear never leaving his golden-brown eyes.

The fear won’t ever go away, and the blood won’t ever come clean.


	2. Blessed Are The Peacekeepers

“She’s your Knight-Commander. You have to trust her,” Knight-Captain Cullen tells himself, yet he still doubts. He’s been doubting for some time now, more and more frequently, despite his best efforts.

Cullen doesn’t want to doubt her. He remembers how imposing she’d seemed when he first arrived in Kirkwall. Tall and formidable and as cold and beautiful as the sunrise glittering over a field of snow, Meredith had appeared to be larger than life. Larger and stronger than the demons and ghosts which still haunted him, at any rate.

But she’d looked at him, and she saw in him something worth believing in, something Knight-Commander Greagoir hadn’t seen; and she’d promoted him to Knight-Captain and trusted him with more authority than he’d ever had before. Cullen wanted more than anything to be worthy of her trust and faith, so he’d tried. He tried hard. He tried to become the man he once dreamed of being, the protector of peace and defender of the innocent.

But Kirkwall, it seems, is not meant for peace.

Cullen owes Meredith everything. He doesn’t doubt that he would not have made it this far without her faith in him, so he’s tried to keep his faith in her. That’s why he’s stood by her, despite his doubts, despite his questioning, despite the whispers of red-tinted madness.

But now? The mages of the Circle are sick with corruption, but it hasn’t reached the point of devastation that it did– back then. At the last Annulment. In Kinloch. When he was put in a cage and tortured as he watched his friends die one by one. It hurts to think about, and his heart clenches with fear in his chest. But Cullen is not caged now. He’s free to think, to act, and he does not believe this Annulment is justified no matter how much he wants to trust Meredith.

Cullen watches the Champion give orders to his companions and kiss his white-haired elven lover for good luck (or goodbye), and he tries not to doubt. He tries hard. But the doubts linger at the back of his mind, a niggling itch he can’t scratch away, as they fight their way through the Gallows, until he can’t keep silent any more as Meredith turns her gleaming red sword on the Champion.

Stepping protectively in front of Garrett Hawke, Cullen draws his own blade.

“You’ll have to go through me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously posted on Tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted on Tumblr.


End file.
